JIFFEEgames.com

JIFFEE is under active development, but it is an experiment in progress
and it is not yet ready for beta release.
Most of it is tested and works fine,
but a few parts are still missing or incomplete,
and even the architecture is still subject to change.

What is JIFFEE?

JIFFEE (JavaScript Interactive Fiction Framework for Education
and Entertainment) is a tool for creating Interactive Fiction.
Interactive Fiction is a form of computer game that
has been around for decades - in fact it was one of the first types
of computer games. Sometimes Interactive Fiction games are called "text
adventures" because they are based on the idea that the computer says
something to you (the player) using text instead of graphics, and
then you reply in the same way, i.e. by calmly typing regular words or
sentences instead of by frantically clicking or waving a controller.
Although anyone can use JIFFEE, it was designed with particular attention
to the needs of teachers.

How can JIFFEE help me in the classroom?

If you are an educator looking for tools to help your students develop their
language comprehension skills,
then JIFFEE was designed for you.
It can be especially useful for foreign-language and second-language
instruction, at any level from elementary through high school or college.
Adding JIFFEE-based games to your toolkit of instructional techniques
provides you with several advantages:

Playing a game may help keep students motivated and focused,
especially if it is a well-written and engaging game.

Because Interactive Fiction games
are entirely based on text, students get lots of practice
reading the target language.
Depending on your situation this could be their primary language,
or it could be a second or a foreign language.

The usual need to play a game many times before finally
learning how to win it automatically provides the repetition necessary for
reinforcement of vocabulary and grammar.

Many IF games require you to solve puzzles in order to win the game.
This requires reading for detail and encourages students
to look up and learn any words they don't yet know — because if
they don't, they could miss a crucial clue.

In addition to the obvious language skills, playing IF can also provide
good practice in logical analysis, organization, and even teamwork.

JIFFEE is designed to make it easy to create your own computer games,
even if you don't have the time or the inclination to learn programming,
so you can create games that are uniquely suited to your own
curriculum. There is also a web site where you and other teachers
can easily publish and share your work.

All that is needed to play a JIFFEE game is a web browser, so students
can easily play the games outside of class on a home or library computer
or even on a modern mobile phone (e.g. the Apple iPhone
or any Android phone like the T-Mobile G1).

The only tool you need to create a JIFFEE game is a simple text editor,
and one of those is already present on nearly every PC, so if you are fortunate
enough to have one or two highly
motivated parents they could help out by writing games
tailored to your requirements.

For more details about the educational use of this tool, see
JIFFEE in the Classroom.
(To be fair, there are other authoring systems for Interactive Fiction
which also provide many of these advantages, especially if you only
care about English. The
Links page gives pointers to the most popular ones.)

Since the best way to learn what IF games look like is to play one,
you might also want to check out
Games Written in JIFFEE
for a few examples of games that you can play right in your browser.

How does JIFFEE compare to other IF authoring systems?

Like virtually every other IF authoring tool,
JIFFEE is intended to make it as easy as possible to get started and is
free for anyone to use,
but it also has a few unusual characteristics which distinguish it
from most existing authoring systems:

JIFFEE supports writing games that can be played in different languages.
(This refers to human languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese; not
programming languages.)
It can be very hard to retrofit that feature into an existing system,
but JIFFEE was designed right from the beginning to support the necessary
internationalization and localization of both input and output.

JIFFEE is based on an existing well-established language (JavaScript),
so it can take advantage of the extensive tools, documentation, and
online support that are already available.
You do not have to know any JavaScript to start using JIFFEE,
but if you do happen to be a programmer then JIFFEE seamlessly and efficiently
puts the
full power of a general-purpose programming language at your disposal.

Any game written with JIFFEE can be posted on the Internet, and then
anyone with a web browser (even on a mobile phone)
can play it by simply clicking on a link to it.
While the introduction of
Parchment has made
a similar one-click-to-play capability
available to many other authoring systems as well,
JIFFEE supports it natively without an extra layer of interpretation overhead.

If you are already familiar with Interactive Fiction
and you want to try your hand at writing games using JIFFEE, see
Authoring Games with JIFFEE.

If you are interested in the design of IF systems in general and JIFFEE
in particular, you can find plenty of detail in
JIFFEE Framework Design.

How do I navigate this web site?

At the top of each page on this web site there is a thick horizontal blue bar.
This is the navigation menu, and it contains a link to each of the major
sections of the site.
If you hold your mouse over any of these links for a second or two,
a more detailed description will pop up.

The last link in the navigation menu points to the "Sitemap," which provides
direct access to every page on the web site.